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<\/p>\nThe owner of Toronto’s island airport “fully supports” an idea by Premier Doug Ford to expand its main runway to make way for jets, but says there would first need to be changes to how the airport is governed.<\/p>\n
In a letter Wednesday to Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria, Roelof-Jan Steenstra, CEO of the Toronto Port Authority, said he welcomes Ford’s recent remarks about Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.<\/p>\n
Steenstra said the authority is “ready to work together” to make Ford’s vision a reality, but there needs to be a plan to help prepare the airport for Ontario’s expected economic and population growth.<\/p>\n
“Addressing airport capacity requirements is a vital issue for the future of Ontario\u2019s economy. Lack of airport capacity results in higher fares for passengers, a decline in regional connectivity including access to remote Northern communities, and a reduction in tourism and business activity,” he said.<\/p>\n
In a keynote address at the Feb. 26 Toronto Region Board of Trade annual dinner, Ford said having a downtown airport is a “gold mine” and that he has been shown polling that supports a larger island airport that would have a longer runway for planes with jet engines.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I’ve got to tell you one thing, we’ve got to extend that runway. We have to bring jets in, smaller jets, whatever, until people can hop on there,” Ford said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is a ‘gold mine.’ (Chris Young\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
Airport restricted by agreement, owner says<\/p>\n
The airport, however, is not under provincial jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
It is governed by a tripartite agreement involving the City of Toronto, Toronto Port Authority and the federal government.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Toronto city council approved an extension to the airport’s lease, starting in 2033, to 2045. The extension enabled what is called the runway end safety area project, which is needed to meet federal regulations.<\/p>\n
Steenstra said the governance of the airport would have to be updated to embrace Ford’s idea.<\/p>\n
“Unlike other airports, Billy Bishop Airport is restricted under its current governance model and, as such, is unable to effectively plan and design the airport for the future,” he said in the letter.<\/p>\n
Steenstra said the type of aircraft permitted to operate at the airport, its ability to develop new infrastructure and the duration of the agreement are all restricted under the existing governance structure. It “hampers investment in the airport and undermines sustainable development and growth,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This governance model needs to be addressed so that the Toronto Port Authority can develop the necessary long-term vision for Billy Bishop Airport,” he added.<\/p>\n
All jet aircraft, except MEDEVAC flights, and certain type of propeller aircraft are prohibited from using the airport, according to its website.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is governed by a tripartite agreement involving the City of Toronto, Toronto Port Authority and the federal government. (Patrick Morrell\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Any changes require consensus, Ottawa says<\/p>\n
In a statement on Friday, the city said: “The City remains focused on working with all partners to support a vibrant and sustainable waterfront and will ensure future discussions about Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport align with that goal.”<\/p>\n
As for the federal government, Transport Canada said in a statement on Friday any future decisions about the airport’s operations and the types of aircraft allowed to use it “will require the consensus of all signatories to the Tripartite Agreement, the lease agreement that governs the operations of the airport.”<\/p>\n
“Such decisions will also involve comprehensive consultations with key stakeholders, affected communities, and Indigenous groups,” it added.<\/p>\n
It’s not the first time the idea of jets at Billy Bishop has come up.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Porter Airlines announced that it wanted to fly jets out of the island airport. There was immediate opposition to the idea. Toronto city council studied the proposal. In 2015, the federal government under Justin Trudeau made it clear it had no intention of letting passenger jets fly out of the airport and the idea died.<\/p>\n
Expansion to cause more pollution, advocate says<\/p>\n
Diane Jameson, a resident of Toronto’s waterfront community, said she has long advocated to stop the airport from expanding. She said the noise is already insufferable and an expansion would result in more pollution.<\/p>\n
“That’s why we move planes and jets outside of city centres,” Jameson said.<\/p>\n
Jameson said she questions Ford’s comments, saying the real “gold mine” is not the airport but the land on which it is sitting, all 210 hectares of it, and the waterfront itself. She said Toronto’s Pearson already handles 95 per cent of air traffic and jets out of Toronto.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t make sense to expand beautiful waterfront property to accommodate jets,” Jameson said.<\/p>\n
Jameson said an independent health and safety study is needed to look at the best use of the land on which the airport sits.<\/p>\n
John Gradek, a faculty lecturer in aviation management at McGill University, said lengthening the runway would mean the community would have to put up with more construction. The pedestrian tunnel linking the airport to the mainland would also have to be expanded, he said.<\/p>\n
“If you have five jets leaving between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning, you got another thousand people that you’ve got to bring into the terminal,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You might have to increase the capacity of the tunnel, build another tunnel, or heaven forbid, build a bridge.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The owner of Toronto’s island airport “fully supports” an idea by Premier Doug Ford to expand its main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[205159,205157,49,48,13743,205156,3302,205158,205155,205160],"class_list":{"0":"post-519616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-airport-capacity","9":"tag-billy-bishop","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-doug-ford","13":"tag-island-airport","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-city-council","16":"tag-toronto-port-authority","17":"tag-tripartite-agreement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}